Easter in Costa Rica!

Our first Easter in Costa Rica was for lack of a better term, spankin awesome!  In Latin America they have "Semana Santa" which is Holy week.  Jaco was popping at the seams with people traveling from San Jose and inland folks wanting to spend their week off at the beach.  It was the first time since we have lived here I felt like it was actually busy.  The weekend started with an Easter party at our neighbors house.  It was so fun.  The kids dyed Easter eggs, made a craft, and went on an Easter egg hunt.  I'm pretty sure an epic time was had by all.

Some of G's best buds, Thomas and Walker

Hannah quit pretending decorating eggs was for Mikayla, we all know you enjoyed it more than her!

The big kids anxiously waiting for the little kids to finish their Easter egg hunt

It was a bit chaotic at times

Easter eggs by the pool, something we couldn't do in Colorado!

What a sweet group of kiddos!!

Sunday morning we went to another little beach town about 5 min up the hwy and Jeff played worship with a friend for a service that our church uses as an outreach at a local beach club.  First of all that's awesome because my husband is never hotter than when he plays guitar, second that is awesome because the service was at a beach club that was a beautiful setting to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and third it was awesome because we stayed after the service with a couple of our friends and played in the super fun pool for the afternoon :)  In Colorado it's a toss up whether or not there will be snow on the ground for your Easter Sunday, and most Easter's since I have been there it's relatively cold.  This Easter we completely different, we sweated through the service of course, and then hopped in the pool...I'm not gonna lie it was awesome!  Christ has Risen, you are blessed with a healthy family (not to mention a hot hubby), good friends, a beautiful setting, and an afternoon in the pool...seriously not sure if we can ever top that Easter morning again.  (Sidenote: With all the beauty around us, I didn't get one family photo of us on Easter!!!  Are you kidding me???)

Hannah and Mikayla 

Here's the crazy thing, our awesome Easter didn't stop there!  The town we live in is a pretty small town.  Even on the edge of town you are about a 5 min bike ride from the beach.  Life revolves around the beach, so it's not uncommon to head to the beach at sunset or to surf and you run into basically everyone else you know either on the way, at the beach, or on your way home.  It's like Artesia minus the smell of stinky oil or cow manure (or money as some would say), minus football, minus the desert, minus all the orange, minus Sonic (a very big minus in my opinion), minus Wal-mart, minus my family (a ginormous minus), plus a beach, plus humidity, plus a bunch of Tico's, plus about 3x as many dogs running around, plus iron gates and bars around all yards and on windows....okay well it's not really like Artesia at except for it's a small town :)

The beauty of it being a small town and laid back lifestyle is that every thing seems to just naturally happen.  We don't really plan weeks in advance to have dinner with friends or head to the beach with G's buddies, it just happens, cause we are all so close and life just feels simpler here.  In the States, we would literally have to get out our calendar to fit our friends into our crazy schedule...what's that about?  I am not missing that piece of our lives back home at all, in fact I absolutely LOVE the laid back lifestyle we are settling into.  All that to say, we ended up having a bonfire on the beach in front of some friends house the evening of Easter.  It was super fun.  Tons of people were there, we roasted hot dogs, the boys surfed (I do not surf when children are around because I do not want innocent blood on my hands...or board), kids ran around screaming throwing sand, splashing in the ocean, MP was barking from being tied up (she still occasionally tramples kids when she gets excited, so we have her on a tight leash in a very literal sense), and basically it was just an awesome time had by all.  (I had more pictures and Jeff deleted some!! Gasp, I know, he got an earful from me about the importance of never deleting pictures without my approval, I'm still recovering from that one!)

Cute girls!

Scott pulled a Baywatch when I was taking a picture of the sunset.  :)

Hanging out by the bonfire next to the beach...ahhhh this is the life :)

You would think that would be the end to our super awesome fun Easter Sunday...but it wasn't.  The last piece wasn't really that fun for Jeff or the lady who was trying to get her cat down from the roof, but for G, MP, the lady's daughter the night guard sitting across the street, and myself...it was down right funny and entertaining :)  On our way home from the beach we walked by this lady and her daughter trying to coax their cat off the roof.  Obviously we couldn't keep walking and not help so G, MP, and I stood off to the side as Jeff tried to help the cat down.  First off it was funny because the daughter was laughing, I feel like she opened the door for an opportunity to laugh at this comical situation, I really appreciate her for that.  The mom just kept talking to the cat in this really high squeaky voice, as if the cat would magically jump into her arms just by the sound of her voice.  Jeff asked if she had a ladder he could get on.  She brought one out a short little ladder with a pillow and put the pillow on top of the ladder and started climbing and was trying to step on the pillow on top of the ladder to give her a little more height...mmm hmmm.  Jeff was holding her hand telling her she should get down cause it wasn't stable to stand on a pillow, she kept trying and was literally wobbling all over the place letting out little gasp and squeals as she tried to balance.  At one point Jeff just let go of her hand and grabbed her waist because it was ridiculously unstable.  She finally grabbed his hands which were still around her waist in hopes that she wouldn't fall off and break something and said "This pillow can't be on here, it's too unstable"...yes, yes your right, we all saw that one coming.  Then Jeff tried his luck (minus the pillow top for instability).  Even Jeff wasn't quite tall enough so the lady handed Jeff the pillow to hold up to the roof in hopes that the cat would eagerly crawl onto the pillow and Jeff could lower the cat down...as you can imagine that did not happen!  After about 5 min of the lady squeaking in that really high voice calling the cat, Jeff holding the pillow above his head unable to see anything, and that cat matching the pitch of the lady's voice with meow's, Jeff climbed down the ladder and told the lady they needed to get a taller ladder to be able to actually get the cat down.

We figured she might have to call someone of ask a neighbor but instead she went inside and brings out a monstrous ladder...hello did you not think that would have been helpful 10 minutes ago when we started this whole almost dying fiasco on the tiny ladder with a pillow on top?  It was at this point I'm pretty sure my giggles had taken over because the whole ordeal was so hilarious.  Jeff was super sweet and helpful while I was girlishly giggling and snapping a couple of pics (sorry babe, someday you will thank me when we have a plethora of ridiculous pictures to look through and laugh about the stories associated with them).  Thankfully after the big ladder was up it took one high pitched call and the cat came to her master, who handed the cat down to Jeff, who held the cat away from Molly who was frantically wanting to chase Miss Kitty.  The night guard across the street gave a little clap and mumbled some words that I think meant he was glad the cat was down, although the bump on the log never even offered to help, at least I offered my smile, laughter, and picture taking ability right?  Any-hoo I thought it was a perfect funny evening occurrence to our awesome Easter Sunday.

Christ bridged the gap by his death and resurrection for all of all of mankind,  on a smaller scale Jeff bridged the gap with a pillow for a lost kitten...what a perfect metaphor to end our Easter celebration :)

I think this might have been a point we were all at a loss to know what to do :)